Tag Archives: jazz documentary

The music documentary Jaco started out as a passion project for Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, who had long wanted to pay cinematic tribute to his four-string hero, Jaco Pastorius. It became one for Paul Marchand, who came on as editor and ended up bringing the film home. A cutter and cameraman who has worked with Martin Scorsese and Chris Rock, Marchand made his feature directorial debut with Jaco, taking the reigns when music doc veteran Stephen Kijak bowed out (both are credited on the finished film).

A jazz fusion master whose records and live performances with Weather Report, Joni Mitchell, and his own bands became legendary, Pastorius revolutionized the bass and its place in contemporary music but struggled with substance abuse and mental illness and died in 1987 at just 35. Earlier this year MusicFilmWeb contributor (and bassist) Steve Karras spoke at length with both Trujillo, the doc’s producer, and Marchand about bringing Jaco’s story to the screen. You can read his Q&A with Trujillo here; in this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Marchand talks about becoming a Jacolyte over the course of making the doc, which screens November 11 and 18 at the Leeds International Film Festival (of which MFW is a media partner) then gets a red-carpet theatrical premiere in LA – details below.

In a world of immense musical diversity, the low end is universal. For proof of that, look no further than Jaco, the documentary bio of Jaco Pastorius. The bass icon, who died in 1987 at the age of 35, gained renown in jazz, particularly with fusion pioneers Weather Report. But he honed his unique harmonic sense and monster chops with an R&B show band (Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders); lent them to records by the likes of Joni Mitchell and ex-Mott the Hoople frontman Ian Hunter; and was a root influence on players as seemingly disparate as Sting, Flea, Geddy Lee, Bootsy Collins, and Robert Trujillo of Metallica, who spent six years shepherding Jaco’s story to the screen. In his last years, battling the bottle and mental illness, he even recorded instructional videos with session bass ace Jerry Jemmott.

Produced by Trujillo, a longtime friend of Pastorius’s kids, Jaco is a true labor of love that fits well within the enticingly broadminded Music on Film selection the 29th Leeds International Film Festival, which opens tonight (and of which MusicFilmWeb is a media partner). The Metallica bassist, formerly of punk/thrash band Suicidal Tendencies and the funk-inflected Infectious Grooves, counts seeing Pastorius live as a teenager as a formative musical experience and now owns the customized fretless bass that was for many years Jaco’s main axe. How he came by the infamous “Bass of Doom,” and performed with it in a scene that climaxes the film, were among the numerous aspects of his abiding Jaco love that Trujillo covered in a recent conversation with writer, musician, and friend of MFW Steve Karras. The Q&A below is edited for length and clarity (and is distinct from the audio interview Steve did with Trujillo in April, which we posted back then). Look out next week for an interview with the doc’s co-director, Paul Marchand. Continue reading →

Bootsy Collins once said that until Jaco Pastorius came along, “bass didn’t know what it was yet.” When it comes to low-end theory, Bootsy is one of those guys whose word we just take. Another would be Robert Trujillo, who slings four strings for Metallica, and who says seeing Jaco perform live when he was kid changed his life. For the past several years Trujillo’s been working on another project, a labor-of-love indie documentary that definitively tells Jaco Pastorius’s story and codifies the late jazz fusion pioneer’s standing as probably the most influential player in the history of electric bass.

Directed by Paul Marchand and Stephen Kijak, Jaco tracks Pastorius’s emergence as a prodigious self-taught talent and his development of an unprecedently limber, fluid harmonic style that, 28 years after his death (amid a welter of substance-abuse and mental-health issues), still reverberates among bassists as varied as Bootsy, Flea, Geddy Lee, and Meshell Ndegeocello (all of whom pay homage in the doc). In this audio interview conducted for CIMMFest by journalist and documentary maker Steve Karras, Trujillo eloquently recalls how Jaco informed his early evolution as a musician and what it means to be one of the caretakers of the late musician’s musical legacy. Continue reading →

Music documentary passion projects, and the crowdfunding efforts they frequently entail, aren’t just the province of broke-ass DIY filmmakers. Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo has spent half a decade shepherding Jaco, a definitive doc portrait of his low-end hero, the late jazz fusion player Jaco Pastorius. (Who didn’t like the term “fusion,” actually – he called what he did “modern American music.”) Co-produced by Trujillo and co-directed by Stephen Kijak – he of Stones in Exile and the imminent Backstreet Boys documentary – the movie has screened as a work in progress at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October and, just last week, the Grammy Museum. Now Trujillo is selling cool stuff at PledgeMusic to raise finishing funds, with an eye on a Record Store Day 2015 release.

Now, I’m guessing that Robert Trujillo lives pretty well, compared to most of us. But before anybody gets all Zach Braff on his ass, remember that Trujillo is the latecomer to Metallica, joining in 2003 (during the filming of Some Kind of Monster). I don’t know if Lars, James, and Kirk have kept him on salary (like the Stones did to Ron Wood for 18 years), but as the bassist recently told LA Weekly about putting his own resources into the movie. “I didn’t write ‘Enter Sandman.’ It’s a a bit different for me.” Continue reading →

A couple years ago in this space we spotlighted The Sax Man, a doc in the making about Cleveland street musician and civic institution Maurice Reedus Jr. Back in August 2012, the filmmakers made their Kickstarter goal, completed the film, and went on to a successful festival run – not just quickly selling out the hometown premiere at the Cleveland International Film Festival, as you might expect, but screened across country and won the Best Music Documentary award at the Arizona International Film Festival. (The doc’s fest ends today and tomorrow with screenings at BendFilm in Oregon.)

So, happy ending, right? Not quite. As with so many music docs, finishing the movie is just the beginning. Getting The Sax Man a proper theatrical run and a DVD/on-demand release means licensing the music, the raison d’etre for a new fundraising campaign on Indiegogo. For a film about a busker whose bread and butter is serenading downtown crowds with all manner of familiar (and very copyrighted) tunes, from TV themes to jazz and pop standards to “Happy Birthday to You,” that expense adds up fast. Continue reading →